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New Gulliver Prep graduate Kate Perez was the Prep’s Silver Knight nominee in the area of Social Science.
Perez and a friend, Sasha Boyers, started an organization called Naturally Human, a non-profit for mental health awareness.
“We do a lot of educational forums and fundraising events for mental health,” she says. “We started in September 2020, the beginning of my junior year.”
She says they first thought of the idea at the end of sophomore year, and since they were doing school online, they had time to work on it.
“We had three Zoom events and we bring in professional speakers,” she says.
The events covered topics such as eating disorders, cult deprogramming and substance abuse.
One of the things that inspired the creation of Naturally Human was something that happened in the Gulliver community.
“There was an incident at my school my freshman year, a student committed suicide,” she says. “I saw the reaction my school had. I realized mental health is not talked about. And yet it’s a huge issue in teens and young adults.”
That was her first brush with mental health issues.
She also took several psychology classes in high school and that interested her as well.
“I think COVID did have a big impact on mental health,” she says. “It did affect some students. It made it even more of a big issue.”
The non-profit has done some fundraising.
“For our first event, we created sweatshirts for our non-profit and sold them,” she says. “All the profits went to NAMI, the National Alliance of Mental Illness.”
That first fundraiser brought in around $450.
“With every presentation there was an option to donate,” she says. “We raised $700 for eating disorder awareness. We raised $400 for substance abuse and $400 for cult deprogramming.”
Since she’s going off to college in the fall, she and her co-founder have made plans to keep Naturally Human going.
“We plan on handing it down to underclassmen and to keep on in Miami,” Perez says. “I want to engage with mental health groups at Northwestern.”
Perez plans to take Journalism at Northwestern University.
At Gulliver, she was Clubs Editor of the yearbook.
“I do a lot of design, layout design, and photography and covering a lot of school events,” she says.
She was the layout editor of Gulliver’s literary magazine, a publication filled with student writing and art.
“I make sure all the layout looks good,” she says. “Sometimes I’ll submit some writing pieces and some photography I have taken for the yearbook. I like creative writing, free style writing. I like writing poems.”
Perez was a member of the short-lived Student Athlete Leadership Council.
“Each coach would pick two players,” she says. “We would meet with the head of athletics to discuss school spirit and things like that.”
She was eligible as she played varsity volleyball.
This year, the volleyball team had a good season, making it to the regional quarter finals.
Perez was happy with the season.
“We had a new coach,” she says. “I think he was the best coach we had in a long time. It was a good year for growing and developing the program.”
At Gulliver, Perez was a member of the French Honor Society, the National Honor Society, Rho Kappa, Psi Alpha, Quill and Scroll and the Cum Laude Society.
Her volunteer work included working with PAWS4You, a dog rescue organization.
“They had Saturday adoption days and I would help out,” she says. “During COVID they would have online fundraisers and I would participate in that.”
Linda Rodriguez Bernfeld
